Watching Celtics games in Australia

[CelticG1]

I am living and working in Australia for a year and was wondering if anyone knew where I could watch NBA-mainly Celtics games or at least the important ones. I am in the Sydney area and have only been here a week but havn't found a place to see the game. I thought I was going to be able to find the Cavs celts game but couldnt even find that anywhere....Also was wondering if anyone knew what the best/cheapest option would be to order an NBA type package either online or on cable. Any help would be greatly appreciated...cheers

[Dirk]

I was in Australia for part of the playoffs last season and was able to catch most of the games shown on ESPN over there. I believe not all of the games that were shown on ESPN in USA (or in other countries for that matter) were also shown in Australia.

I always checked http://intltv.espn.com/schedules/calendar.jsp to see which games they were going to show over there. I searched by sport (basketball-nba) for the espn australia channel. If you do that right now you will get that the next celtics games on espn australia are... (I just took a quick look, maybe I missed some):

celts at miami Jan 22
celts at detroit Jan 31
celts vs cleveland Mar 7
celts vs miami Mar 19
celts at san antonio Mar 21

you search listings by sport here: http://intltv.espn.com/schedules/sport/sport.jsp

Anything regarding TV packages I have no idea. I just went over to bars with friends and drink lots of beer not caring about the fact that the games started around 10:30 or 11:00 am. It was a heck of a way to start your day. 

[twinbree]

NBA has international league pass broadband. Not sure how it works though

[gustusias]

The slingbox. My brother bought one for me as a present, installed it in his living room to his home TV,and I can watch FSNE (actually his entire TV package) overseas here in Israel. It is fantastic.

[Dirk]

League pass would be a nice option. Go here http://ilp.nba.com/ There you should be able to know if Australia is one of the countries where LP is available. Problem is that for the Playoffs you will not get a single game on LP because they are all shown on national television.

Yeah slingbox is also another option, but you should also check the support on Australia.

You still get a lot of the playoffs games on ESPN Australia. The conference finals were shown completely if I remember well and all the finals games were shown too.

[Scottie]

I am living and working in Australia for a year and was wondering if anyone knew where I could watch NBA-mainly Celtics games or at least the important ones. I am in the Sydney area and have only been here a week but havn't found a place to see the game. I thought I was going to be able to find the Cavs celts game but couldnt even find that anywhere....Also was wondering if anyone knew what the best/cheapest option would be to order an NBA type package either online or on cable. Any help would be greatly appreciated...cheers

Hi mate,

I'm down in Tassie and never miss a game. There are a few "pirate TV station" sites around the wen that I have used in the past, but nowadays I subscribe online to League Pass Broadband. You can watch every game live and replay them up to 24 hours after. The only issue I have with it is that you seem to get the home team commentary so you miss out on Mike and Tommy some of the time. Similarly, if it's a nationally televised game you have to put up with that idiot Van Gundy and his sidekick Marc Jackson. But, given how I used to follow games a couple of years ago, I'll take it.

The quality is really good and, for the most part, it is lag free.
http://ilp.nba.com/

[jackson_34]

Yeh I'll echo Scottie's suggestion with International League Pass, It's a very good service to have. Gone are the days desperatly searching the net for a stream of a C's game!

Hope you have fun living in Aus CelticG1!!

[christuffa]

...and I'll third the motion.

I live in Sydney and have interntaional league pass broadband. It's great, but not as great as what the US get. You will need an ADSL connection (at least 1000kbps), but to get the most out of it I suggest ADSL2+. It will cost you US$100 for the rest of the season.

There are also other online sources which are not as hard to find as they used to be, particularly for the good games.

As far as places to watch outside your home go, there are a few bars:
*Sports bar at Star City Casino - have a 20 odd metre wide screen which I watched the Detroit ECF series on last year. Became a bit annoying because they wouldn't turn off the horse racing audio so we could listen to the game.
*Cheers!, on George Street in the CBD - it's a good pub. Last year me and a few mates watched the entire finals series at this pub along with up to 20 Boston fans, a large proportion (say 15 odd) were from Boston and here studying at uni. There were also a group of local chinese LA supporters, it was fun listening to them whine about being owned. Up stairs they have 3 46" TV's, and they will gladly change the channel and turn it up if you ask. They mainly promote people to watch the premier league soccer, but those games are usually over before the basketball starts. I also watched the MLB playoffs here, but the following of that is not as great as the basketball over here and there were only 5 or so people there.

During the regular season, ESPN only show two games a week. One on Wednesday and one on Saturday. They show them live, and then a replay at night time. For some reason though, yesterday they didn't even show the BOS vs CLE game, but chose PHX vs ?? instead, mainly because of the timing of the games I believe. Got to remember to add 14 hours, so an 8PM ET (Friday night) game will start at midday on Saturday here.

I would be more than happy to catch a game or two with you in at Cheers or at my place. In the next month I will be moving to the inner west closer to the city. I will be taking the Monday off and going to a pub to watch the Superbowl this year. I know of a few parties, some asking big $$$ to go, but will probably go to Cheers to watch.

Ah well, time to go to bed now. I am getting up in 3 hours to watch the raptors game live on the net.


PS. Jackson, did you ever live in Newy? I moved down to Sydney from there 2 years ago?